


Memories of an Ordinary Life

by maat_seshat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-21
Updated: 2009-05-21
Packaged: 2019-09-19 23:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17011257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maat_seshat/pseuds/maat_seshat
Summary: Dawn has a lifetime of memories.





	Memories of an Ordinary Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Malinaldarose: _"Replenish the world with quiet wonder, not sorceries." Charles de Lint._ Thanks for a wonderful prompt. 
> 
> Beta'd by brightknightie, without whom this would be an unintelligible mess. Many, many thanks.

Dawn swung her legs impatiently off the edge of Buffy’s bland dorm bed and flopped backwards. “Are you almost _done_?” she demanded.

Buffy made an impatient sound from where she leaned in towards the mirror on her dresser. “No closer than I was a minute ago, when you asked for the fifth time. Would you _please_ like to go wait downstairs?”

Dawn stuck her tongue out at the ceiling. “No,” she said flatly. She considered. “It’s not even like you’re going to see your _boyfriend_. We’re eating dinner, at home, like you promised Mom we would.” Buffy didn’t bother to answer, so Dawn kept looking up and kept rambling. “Unless you’re planning to go see him afterwards. You are, aren’t you? You’re going to skip out on these stupid family dinners that you promised Mom, and you’re going to go make out with your boyfriend. And then you’re going to give Mom some lame excuse—”

A loud clattering interrupted her as Buffy gathered her makeup, shoved it into her squeaky plastic bath bag and took two big steps to bring her to the door. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced. “You _stay here_.” The door slammed shut behind her. Dawn propped herself up on her elbows and started to shove her way off the bed to follow her sister. A soft giggle from Willow’s side of the room distracted her.

“What is that?” she asked, going over to Willow’s bed and squirming her way between Willow and Tara to get a look at the book in front of them. When they kicked her out, she figured, she could always go bug Buffy and say that they told her to leave. She looked down and made a face. “Why are you giggling over your psychology textbook?”

“Oh, Dawnie,” Willow grinned at her. “You’ll appreciate this. He’s trying to write a metaphor for men needing to be courageous, but he’s using chess to do it. ‘If the king does not lead the charge, his men will not follow.’”

Dawn blinked. “Where?” she demanded.

Willow pointed about midway down the right-hand page. _As one scholar has noted, “Chess…is a play substitute for the art of war,” and like most play substitutes, it discourages some of the very values it should inculcate. Leaders for centuries have known the adage that if the king does not lead the charge, his men will not follow. Perhaps it is time for armchair warriors to relearn that lesson._ Dawn gaped.

“Chess doesn’t _work_ like that,” she finally managed, outraged.

Tara laughed quietly. “That was Willow’s reaction, too.”

“He’s completely ignoring the history of chess, too,” Willow said, bouncing a little on the bed as she tapped the open page. “I mean, the queen started out just as weak as the king, but she took on all of the other pieces’ strengths as the game developed, which he really should talk about, but no. Just a lot of stuff about the emasculating nature of having the king as the weakest piece on the board.”

Dawn scowled at the book. “Not allowed,” she told it.

Tara laughed again, full-throated this time. “He forgets about all of the other pieces, too.”

Dawn propped her head on one hand. “That’s obviously because introducing knights into his book would mess everything up. You know, since they’re even cooler than queens.”

“The way you play, maybe,” Willow answered, with her usual friendly jibe at Dawn’s habit of leading with her knight. “He doesn’t even mention pawns. Pawns. They get less moves than kings.”

“He doesn’t identify with pawns,” Tara said, tugging the textbook away from Willow’s restless fingers. “And he’s only looking at pieces that clearly have major roles in the game.”

Dawn rolled onto her back and stared up at the two of them on either side of her. “Pawns play pretty major roles. People just don’t see it, you know, because the queen’s role is flashier.” Her eyes strayed to the door, which remained closed. The room was quiet for a minute.

“The pawn can always become a queen, though,” Tara said finally. “I’m not very good at it, but that was always my favorite thing about chess, when I was watching a game where the pawn got to the other side.”

“Yeah,” Dawn sighed.

“Oh,” Willow said brightly, “but the nice thing about good metaphors is you can interpret them about five different ways. Here,” she leaned half off the bed and rummaged around the stack of books on the floor. “This has much better metaphors.” She flashed the cover, white with a large mask on it. “Magic is s—”

“Willow!” Tara exclaimed, blushing a little.

Dawn looked at them both, interested. “Magic is what?”

“Magic is creepy,” Willow said, nodding her head in sharp punctuation. “Here at least. But it’s good! I mean, if you like that sort of thing.” She waved the book over Dawn’s head again, and Dawn grabbed it, looking at the title: _Masks_ , by Fumiko Enchi.

“It’s better than most of what she’s reading for her speculative fiction and psychology class,” Tara confided. “You should read it, Dawnie. She’ll have someone besides me to talk about it with.”

Willow smiled at Tara, who met her eyes over Dawn’s head, and Dawn had the momentary thought that they must have forgotten that she was in the room. Weirdly enough, it wasn’t a bad feeling; it felt more like being trusted.

The door opened suddenly, and Willow and Tara glanced away from each other quickly, blushing and staring at opposite corners of the room. Buffy tossed her makeup bag onto the bed, and crossed her arms expectantly. Dawn looked hard at Buffy’s face, but she couldn’t see the makeup at all, not even the little bit of eyeliner that Buffy had put on before. Her face looked just a little pink, but that was it. “You don’t even look different,” Dawn pointed out.

Buffy glared. “That’s because I’m going to eat dinner. Are you ready or not?” She held the door open expectantly.

Dawn looked at Willow and held the book up a little. “Can I borrow this?”

“Borrow,” Willow replied, “read. Talking will happen.” Tara made little shooing motions that somehow didn’t feel like she wanted Dawn gone or anything, and Dawn shrugged and stood up, tucking the book under her arm.

“I’ve been ready for ages,” she said.

***

It had never been real. Dawn stared up at the ceiling again, only this time there weren’t any giggles to distract her. There might have been sobs, instead, but she wasn’t listening for those. It wasn’t like it would even be hard to change Dawn’s memories, since they were fake anyway, and how did she know Willow hadn’t done this before and never gotten caught?

She rolled over and muffled her face into the pillow, didn’t listen for the slam of the door that might mean Tara was gone for good or might mean Buffy had finally come home, and tried to think of a happy moment that she knew was real.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I'm retroactively noting that this was a Tabula Rasa tag, but I didn't want to say so off the bat, for reasons that I hope are clear.
> 
> 2\. I probably very unfairly maligned the study of psychology here, but I'm pretty sure the show did that already, so please forgive me. The quote comes from [a Time article](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910405-1,00.html), and the history Willow cites from _Birth of the Chess Queen_ , by Marilyn Yalom, cited to me by brightknightie.


End file.
